Summary
His Majesty’s Government’s June 1922 statement of policy in Palestine, issued by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill: the authoritative British interpretation of the Balfour Declaration, denying that it contemplated a wholly Jewish Palestine or the disappearance or subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture, defining the Jewish National Home as the further development of the existing Jewish community, limiting Jewish immigration by the country’s Economic capacity to absorb new arrivals, and holding the whole of Palestine west of the Jordan excluded from the 1915 McMahon pledge (British Policy in Palestine — British White Paper of June 1922, lines 27-53).
Details
- The statement was drawn up after consultation with the High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, and summarises correspondence with a delegation from the Moslem Christian Society of Palestine that had been in England for some time (lines 27).
- The Declaration of 1917, reaffirmed at San Remo and in the Treaty of Sevres, “is not susceptible of change” (line 35).
- Self-government is to come by gradual stages: a Legislative Council of the High Commissioner as President, twelve elected and ten official members, is the second step, with control over the Executive deferred to a later review (line 49).
- The Question of Palestine quotes the Arab delegation’s 1922 reply to the White Paper: “The intention to create the Jewish National Home is to cause the disappearance or subordination of the Arabic population, culture and language” (PDF p.104).
- Perceptions of Palestine uses the paper as the British clarification against which later United States readings of the declaration, as a commitment of all Palestine as a Jewish homeland or state, diverged (lines 447-463).
Related pages
British Policy in Palestine — British White Paper of June 1922, Balfour Declaration, Winston Churchill, Jewish National Home, Economic capacity